I keep thinking of the people falling from the sky. The images are seared into my mind: Our Afghan allies, the people we were callously leaving to their fates after 20 years, clinging to an American plane taking off from Kabul Airport, only to drop to their deaths moments later. Afterwards, Joe Biden had the gall to declare “with all of my heart, I believe this is the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America.”
A year on, how should we evaluate Biden’s declaration? Well, the Taliban has reinstalled a tyrannical theocratic government under which the precious freedoms gained by Afghan women over the past 20 years have been completely reversed. If the “best decision for America” involves trampling liberty and solidarity underfoot, then I don’t want to imagine what the worst decision would look like.
More tangibly, we were told that the Taliban would no longer harbor terrorists — Biden promised in his withdrawal speech “to make sure that Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.” And yet, as Barbara Elias warned last year, this is not a promise the president had the power to keep. Links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda were and are too deep and strong to be severed. Elias cited worrying intelligence assessments that al-Qaeda could become a real threat to the US again as soon as 2023.
Her warning was vindicated two weeks ago, when Biden announced the successful killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul in an apartment rented by an aide of Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. Haqqani, in turn, is the leader of the Haqqani network, a Taliban offshoot that the Wall Street Journal has called the group’s “most radical and violent branch.” The Taliban claimed they were unaware of Zawahiri’s presence in the heart of their capital, a statement that knowledgeable observers have rightly called out for its sheer effrontery. --->READ MORE HERE
One year after the U.S. military withdrew its troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained control of the country, top lawmakers and White House officials are still clashing over who, or what, is to blame for the collapse of the Afghan government.
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report over the weekend detailing the findings of their investigation into the chaotic withdrawal, concluding a “complete lack and a failure to plan,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the committee’s chairman, told CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The White House disputed the findings, decrying the report as being “riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information, and false claims,” according to a memo.
Here’s what we know about how the Afghanistan pullout unfolded last year: --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories:
+++++U.S. Left over $7 Billion Worth of Weapons in Afghanistan: State Department+++++
More than 1,000 Americans were left in Afghanistan by Biden exodus: GOP report
America’s Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal Last Year Was Entirely Biden’s Fault
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